Cream JustMental graphic reading ‘Non-Recent Child Sexual Abuse. RCPsych Apologises. Now What?’ with standfirst ‘The Royal College of Psychiatrists has said sorry for decades of NHS mental health failures. JustMental responds, and asks what this means for Northern Ireland.’
09/01/2026

Non-Recent Child Sexual Abuse: RCPsych Apologises, Now What?

This week, the Royal College of Psychiatrists apologised, directly and publicly, to adult survivors of non-recent child sexual abuse, for decades of NHS mental health care that too often did more harm than good.

Professional bodies rarely do this. In a new position statement, PS04/26, published on 26 August, the College has acknowledged that mental health services have repeatedly misdiagnosed, mismanaged and, in some cases, retraumatised the very people they were meant to help. The statement was co-produced with survivors themselves and chaired by consultant psychiatrists Dr Jo Stubley and Maria Eyres.

At JustMental, we’re calling this what it is: significant, overdue, and genuinely welcome. We’re also calling it what it isn’t. An apology changes nothing, on its own, for the person sitting in a GP’s waiting room today, working up the courage to say something they’ve never said out loud before.

What the College Actually Said About Non-Recent Child Sexual Abuse

Non-recent child sexual abuse (NRCSA), abuse that happened in childhood but is disclosed, or fully recognised, much later in adulthood, is far more common than most people realise. RCPsych’s own position statement puts the scale plainly: an estimated one in five girls and one in ten boys in England and Wales are affected by sexual abuse before the age of 18. On average, survivors don’t disclose what happened to them until sixteen to twenty-four years after the abuse took place.

Dr Lade Smith, in the final weeks of her presidency before handing over to her successor Professor Subodh Dave, said she was sorry that survivors had too often suffered “avoidable harm” while trying to get help. The College’s own findings describe patients repeatedly forced to retell traumatic histories to different clinicians, treatment that missed the underlying cause of their distress entirely, and survivors who disclosed abuse only to not be believed.

Gabrielle Shaw, chief executive of the National Association for People Abused in Childhood (NAPAC), called the apology “significant and welcome”, while making clear it has to lead to real change, not just words on a page. We agree with both halves of that sentence.

Why This Matters Here, in Northern Ireland

The position statement doesn’t stop at England’s border. It explicitly states that its findings must be carried into the equivalent structures in Northern Ireland, Wales and Scotland. That matters, because this region carries its own long, unfinished history with institutional and childhood abuse. The Commissioner for Survivors of Institutional Childhood Abuse has, since 2024, been recommending a proper prevalence survey for non-recent child sexual abuse in Northern Ireland, a recommendation that traces back to the 2019 Gillen Review. As things stand, we still don’t have a clear, reliable picture of how many people here are carrying this.

And we’re asking survivors to disclose into a system that is already stretched thin. The most recent RCPsych Northern Ireland workforce census, published in March this year, found 29% of consultant psychiatrist posts here are either vacant or covered by locum doctors, and more than a third of specialty and specialist posts are not permanently staffed. Trauma-informed care, the kind RCPsych is now saying every survivor deserves, needs continuity: a clinician who’s still there in six months, not eight rushed sessions with a stranger followed by a discharge letter. That is extraordinarily hard to deliver in a workforce this thin.

Celebration, With Conditions

We want to be honest about what this apology is, and what it isn’t.

It is a professional body publicly naming a failure it has watched play out for decades, co-produced with the people who lived it, and putting its name to a set of recommendations for change. That deserves recognition.

It is not funding. It is not a guarantee of trauma-informed training for every member of staff a survivor might meet, GP, dentist, A&E nurse, psychiatrist, long before they ever reach specialist mental health care. And it is not, on its own, an answer for someone in Northern Ireland right now who has waited months for a first appointment, in a system already running on nearly a third fewer permanent consultants than it needs.

JustMental will be following up directly with RCPsych in Northern Ireland to understand what this means in practice here, and we’ll keep you updated as that conversation develops.

To survivors reading this: what happened to you was not your fault. It was never too late, too complicated, or too long ago to matter. You deserved to be believed the first time.

Support If You Need It

If this has raised anything difficult for you, you don’t have to sit with it alone.

  • NAPAC (National Association for People Abused in Childhood): 0808 801 0331, free and confidential, 10am–9pm Mon–Thu, 10am–6pm Fri
  • Lifeline NI: 0808 808 8000, 24/7
  • Samaritans: 116 123, 24/7
  • CALM: 0800 58 58 58
  • SHOUT: text 85258

“This is not wellness. This is war against stigma.”

— JustMental